Data mask

12 / 2016

During the two intensive days of the symposium »un/certain futures« held at HfbK Braunschweig, organised by the master degree Transformation Design and its directors Prof. Dr. Jonas and Dr. Hebert, La Loma gave a two-hour workshop entitled “Data Mask”. It literally meant to give data a face and to put it on display.

The questions for the first masks were taken from a study of the World Happiness Report. Its approach is based on the idea of the former King of Bhutan, who in 1979 preferred the subjective happiness of the population and the preservation of cultural values as a definition of the value of his country instead of the gross domestic product.

On a scale from 1 to 10, the participants should assess their own quality of life, social support, freedom of choice, generosity, positive and negative impacts on their lives and their confidence in the government. Each of the coloured bars stands for one of these seven topics, which were individually cut off and arranged by each participant.

Afterwards La Loma presented the five positive actions defined by the Happy Planet Index for a happy life: connect, be active, be aware, keep learning and give. None of these actions requires money, none follows the principle of constant growth. Again, the approach is an alternative to the existing system.

With this stimulus, the participants have developed masks, which both give the wearer as well as the viewer happiness, passes it on or makes them think about it.

Thank you so much for the invitation and also thanks a lot to all the participants.